Play, Pause (a Time to Remember)
by thisbloodycat
Summary: In hindsight, Draco should have known change was often unstoppable when it came heralded by one Harry Potter.


**Warning(s):** None.  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.  
**Notes:** Written for prompt #100 at hp_drizzle 2014. My warmest thanks to Iwao and Eidheann, who beta-read this for me, both for their invaluable help and for being so wonderfully supportive—it meant so much to me! And thank you, golden_snitch12, for leaving such an amazing prompt. I truly enjoyed writing this and I can only hope I've done it justice :)

* * *

It's a little after six o'clock when Pansy steps out of the Floo, demanding to hear all the juicy details. "Draco, darling, don't you know better than to keep secrets from me?" She raises one of her carefully shaped eyebrows. "Start spilling this instant."

Draco presses a wineglass into her hand—evening may call for tea, but he can't decide whether Pansy will tease him or pass out from sheer shock by the time he's done with his story, and in both cases, he's definitely going to need something stronger—and tells her, "It all started one stormy winter night in mid-February …"

* * *

The day had dawned mild enough, but grew steadily windy and grey throughout the afternoon, before it finally began to pour. Draco wasn't even surprised; February always had been a month for unpredictable weather.

He'd been sitting in the shadow of the door that led to what had once been Borgin &amp; Burkes. He wasn't sure how long he'd been there exactly, but he figured it must have been a while. The lamps hadn't been on when he'd first arrived, and his clothes certainly hadn't been that drenched.

The shop was already abandoned by then, like so many others. The end of the war had prompted a bit of a witch-hunt around Knockturn Alley, and with several proprietors arrested on suspicion of aiding runaway Death Eaters, or smuggling restricted potions, or whatever bollocks charges the Ministry had fabricated to put them away, a vast majority had soon decided fleeing to the continent was a safer option.

As had most of Draco's friends, for that matter.

* * *

"That's why we never returned from our holiday in France," Pansy cuts in with a cautious smile. "Mother heard from Mrs Greengrass that the Aurors were investigating us, and … well. We panicked."

"I know." Pansy isn't the only one who left, she's just the first one to come back. Blaise is still living in Tuscany with his mother, and Draco hasn't heard from Goyle in over a year. He hopes the big lump has managed to steer clear of trouble. "I never resented you for leaving—any of you." To be fair, 'never' is a bit of a stretch, but he doesn't resent them anymore.

"I still feel terrible. I wish I could have been—"

"Don't beat yourself up over it, Pans," Draco says, waving a hand impatiently. "You know I would have done the same, if I could."

But the thing was, he couldn't.

* * *

The Ministry would rather keep the Malfoys where they could see them, which was how Draco found himself there on that fateful night—and not, say, in a hotel in Paris, or a luxury villa in Phuket—curled up by himself in an empty doorway, shivering under the rain, with nowhere else to go.

Well, it was at least _part _of the reason. Admittedly, there was more to it, like the fact that even the Leaky (that filthy dump!) was still refusing to rent him a room.

The faint sound of a voice calling his name startled him out of his thoughts. It was barely audible over the constant drip, drip, drip of falling rain, but Draco didn't need to look up to know it was _him_. Of course it was—him, and his bloody penchant for showing up when Draco was at his lowest.

"Malfoy? Is that you?"

_Great_, Draco thought bitterly, because his day hadn't been nearly bad enough so far. He'd just been minding his own business, for fuck's sake. Why did the universe insist on punishing him like this?

"Why are you all—" Potter broke off, chuckling. "You look like a drowned ferret."

* * *

"The ferret incident, really?" Pansy leans back on his sofa, crossing one leg over the other. It makes her tasteful, grey pleated skirt bunch up untidily around her thighs. "It never gets old, does it?"

"Not to them, it doesn't," mutters Draco.

"Gryffindors, I swear—" she rolls her eyes, "—forever stuck at the age of fourteen."

"Tell me about it." Even now that he's found a truce of sorts with Harry's friends—it seems to be holding, for the most part—Draco couldn't agree more.

Merlin, he's missed his best friend. He's missed her something awful. They've talked on the Floo and written to each other, but it's not the same as actually having her back.

* * *

Draco glared up at Potter, but somehow managed to catch himself before the insults made it past his lips—a feat of which he felt quite proud indeed. Maybe, if he ignored Potter long enough, Potter would get bored and leave, and then Draco could go back to being miserable in the miserable weather without Saint Potter there to bear witness. Which suited him just fine, really.

Only, Potter didn't seem to be going anywhere. He was, in fact, moving closer.

"What are you doing here?"

"Merlin's pants. What does it _look _like I'm doing, you daft git?" Draco snapped. So much for ignoring Potter.

"How should I know?" Potter shrugged. "Getting soaked, apparently."

"Perceptive, aren't you?"

"Well," Potter said, crouching down next to Draco, "why on Earth would you be here at—_Tempus!_—ten past midnight on a weekday, then? Feel free to enlighten me."

"If you must know, it's because _your _people"—Draco pointed an accusing finger at Potter's chest—"are all over my home, tearing the place to shreds. They seem convinced we're hiding Dark Artefacts under the floorboards or something. I needed to get out …" before he hexed one of the aggravating bastards to the moon and back and landed himself in a cosy little cell in Azkaban, with only his father and his very own pet Dementor for company, "… for a while."

Draco wasn't delusional. He'd never expected things to go swimmingly for his family after the war, what with them being on the losing side and all. But that _years _after the fact, Aurors were still trampling through the Manor with no respect whatsoever for …

It was beyond preposterous.

He had put up with it as long as he could, but eventually, he had begun to wonder if he'd ever be allowed to move on with his life. One had to draw the line somewhere.

"And are you?"

Draco frowned. "Am I what?"

"Hiding Dark Artefacts under the floorboards." Potter's eyes twinkled mischievously as he spoke; Draco wanted to punch that annoying look off his face. He shouldn't—wouldn't, _couldn't_, really. As badly as he wanted to, assaulting a DMLE employee was definitely out of the question. Something of his thoughts must have shown, however, because Potter quickly added, "Relax. I was just kidding, you prickly"—he poked Draco on the side—"little wanker"—another poke—"you."

All that manhandling had the unfortunate effect of making the cold, wet fabric of Draco's shirt stick uncomfortably to his skin. It made Draco shudder. Since when did Potter _touch _him, anyway? Merlin, Draco felt dirty. And his cheeks felt warm. He cursed his naturally pale complexion; there was no way Potter could miss the blush.

"Stop that, you beast," Draco said, and amazingly Potter did—though one of his hands remained, for some unfathomable reason, on Draco's knee.

* * *

"Draco, Draco, Draco"—Pansy sounds delighted, even as she shakes her head in faux disappointment—"have I taught you nothing?" For the last half-hour or so, she's been alternating between sitting next to Draco and sipping her wine, and pacing about the parlour while sipping her wine. "You mean to tell me you honestly didn't see that coming? It never occurred to you that Potter might be—oh, I don't know—_hitting on you_, perhaps?"

"I wasn't …" Thinking about Harry like _that_. Of course he'd noticed Harry's looks, because really, who hadn't? But Draco wouldn't even dare to hope that Harry would notice him. Harry was famous, for Merlin's sake, and there was also the tiny matter of … "I thought he was straight."

Draco doesn't pine after straight men, thank you very much. Lost causes are for other people—Gryffindors, probably, maybe even Hufflepuffs.

"Please. Even I knew Potter was gay." Pansy seems to be in one of her pacing phases at the moment, but she stops abruptly, turning to him. "You ought to read the _Prophet _from time to time, love." She looks decidedly smug.

"I refuse to pay for other people's lies," Draco says. "Especially when I could just as easily make up my own." And at least the lies he'd come up with would cast him in a somewhat better light.

* * *

"You used to have more of a sense of humour, back in school," Potter said, eyebrows knit together.

"Potter, if you find anything about this whole situation amusing, I can assure you it's _your _sense of humour that's malfunctioning. Not mine."

"Guess they really must have got under your skin."

Draco snorted. "You have no idea."

Potter shifted a bit closer then—hoping to avoid the muddy puddle growing next to his boot, Draco surmised—but didn't say a thing.

"Look," Draco started, hugging his knees closer to his chest, "is there an actual reason you're here?" He wished he had a proper wand. It was raining with a genuine ferocity, and casting _Impervius _on his cloak while wielding the stick of utter uselessness the Ministry had allowed him, was far too dangerous an endeavour to even consider. He'd already turned a few strands of his hair a pale blue earlier, while attempting to reattach them after they got splinched. "Are you taking me in for questioning? Am I getting arrested?"

"What?" Potter looked taken aback. "No, I was just—You're shaking, Malfoy."

"So?" Draco tugged his cloak tighter around himself, which, soaked through as it was, only succeeded in making him colder. "Don't you have places to be?" He pointedly eyed Potter's crumpled Auror robes. "A job to do, perhaps?"

"I'm done for the night, actually," Potter explained. "I was just about to head home, but then I—" Draco sneezed. "Oh, for—You'll catch your death out here." Potter stood, holding a hand out to him. "Come with me."

"What?" Had Potter changed his mind about arresting him already? "Go where, exactly?"

"Somewhere dry and Auror-free," Potter said. Then added wryly, "Unless you're counting me, that is."

That was it then. Potter had clearly gone round the bend. If he was expecting Draco to simply tag along after such a vague explanation, he had another thing coming.

"Come on." Potter sighed, and wriggled the fingers of his outstretched hand, as if he thought the only possible reason Draco wasn't grabbing it was that he hadn't seen it yet. Even though it was right in front of his face.

"No." Hell, no. "I'm not moving unless you tell me where we're going." The only sort of people who did that were the sort that made the headlines the following day, after their bodies were found butchered in some dark alley. And theirs wasn't a club Draco was particularly keen on joining. Not that he was scared of _Potter_, mind. Potter was too much of a Gryffindor to truly be dangerous—at least as long as there were no prophecies or Dark Lords involved—but still … "It's not like you can make me, is it?"

Potter raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I rather think I could."

"Didn't you say you weren't here in an official capacity?"

"My place, you absolute tit. We're going to my place," Potter snapped, eyes flickering to Draco's face before he sighed, again. "Are you coming or not?"

"You've got to be shitting me," Draco said, but took Potter's hand anyway—out of curiosity, he told himself, purely out of curiosity, but Potter's hand felt reassuringly warm and solid against his own.

* * *

"He took you _home _with him," Pansy says, somehow managing to look both appalled and overjoyed all at once. "_Harry Potter_ took you home with him."

"That's what I just said, yes."

She nods slowly. From the way the corners of her lips keep twitching, holding her laughter in check must be taking some real effort. "Because it was raining, and he was worried poor ickle Draco might catch a cold."

"That's what _he _said, anyway." Draco had caught a cold, regardless. And by now, he's pretty sure Harry was anything but candid about his motives that night. But that's how it happened, and given the chance, Draco wouldn't change a thing.

"Aw, how cute is that?" Pansy downs the rest of her glass and holds it out to Draco—"Be a dear, will you?"—smiling sweetly when he lifts the bottle. "And then?" she asks a while later. "What happened then?"

"And then …" Draco hesitates. It's difficult to describe something when words simply cannot do it justice. "You see, Pans, Harry's home is truly the stuff of nightmares."

* * *

Potter's house … Potter's house was really something else. It definitely wasn't the sort of place you'd expect the Saviour of the Wizarding World to be living in. If anything, it looked like a darker, shabbier version of the Manor, in the days when it had served as the Dark Lord's personal bed and breakfast. Minus the screaming.

"Potter?"

Draco stared uneasily at the row of House-elf heads mounted on the wall along the stairs, each passing second further strengthening his belief that coming here had been a terrible, terrible mistake indeed. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but that was just because he'd been sopping wet, half-frozen, and clearly—_obviously_—losing his marbles.

"Potter, what the hell?"

"Oh, that," Potter said. "Yes, that—I didn't put them there, I swear. I just …" He rubbed the back of his neck, looking, for a moment, about as uncomfortable as Draco felt. "I've never figured out how to take them down."

"Right." Of course. That made perfect sense. It was common knowledge that most wizard homes came with a bunch of House-elf body parts stuck to the wall. Salazar, what was Potter thinking? Not even Potter, for all that he was woefully uneducated in all matters of wizarding tradition, could believe _that _was standard household decor.

"Er," Potter said, after a few awkward minutes, "you're dripping all over my floor." He gestured vaguely at Draco's cloak. "Give that here?"

"Right," Draco said again. He pushed back his hood, moving to undo the clasp around his neck. To be quite honest, he'd have appreciated a drying charm on his clothes right about then, but he'd be damned if he was going to let Potter know his wand was little more than an accessory.

When he finally turned around to hand his cloak to Potter—and tearing his eyes away from that monstrosity of a wall took no small amount of effort; Draco kept expecting the wretched little things to snap into motion, and jump out at him any moment—Potter was looking at him with a strange glint in his eyes.

"Love what you've done with the hair, by the way," he said. "Very stylish."

"Fuck you." Draco threw the sodden garment at Potter's face. Potter caught it before it hit him, of course. Probably just to spite Draco.

"Looks good on you. Gives your hair a touch of colour, you know?" An amused grin slid onto Potter's face. "Is it a new fad among you Purebloods?"

Draco glared. "Seriously, fuck you." He was not going to blush. That hadn't even been a real compliment, for fuck's sake, Potter was _mocking_him, and Draco's brain was getting the signals all mixed up. Merlin, when had he reverted back to his adolescence?

"Careful, now." The amused grin morphed into something that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a flirty smile. "Keep repeating that and I'll start to believe you mean it."

* * *

"Surely, by then you caught on?"

"Well …" Not quite, though Draco did wonder what it would feel like to kiss those lips. Harry really has the loveliest lips. Neatly cut, but pink and soft-looking, and utterly kissable. And back then, Draco didn't even have to wonder for long, because Harry had kissed him, completely out of the blue.

* * *

Draco squeezed his eyes shut and thought, _Get a grip, Draco, for Merlin's sake. You're hallucinating._ Only, when he opened his eyes again, Potter's face was still shockingly close, and his lips were still moving against Draco's. And Draco was kissing him back.

He pushed Potter away as hard as he could.

* * *

"You did _what_?" Pansy threw her hands up in the air. "I can't believe you! All those years I spent listening to you going on about him—Potter's arse looks amazing in those jeans, don't you think? Oh, Pans, Potter has the most dazzling green eyes—and when he finally makes a move on you, _that's _what you do?"

"Oi! I did not spend years going on about Harry, as you so charmingly put it." Draco doesn't pine after straight men, damn it, even if, apparently, all his friends believe he does. Even if Harry turned out not to be so straight, in the end.

"You so did. And yet, you stopped him when he kissed you. You, darling"—Pansy shakes her head disapprovingly—"are a piece of work. You know that, right?"

"I didn't stop him!" All right, so maybe he did. But it was temporary. "I was surprised, that's all." That, and the eyes. Draco didn't much feel like snogging in front of the House-elves; their lifeless eyes seemed to follow his every movement. To this day, they're still a major turn off, those shrunken heads.

But mostly, it was the shock that did it. And the fact that Harry hadn't been particularly articulate when he tried to explain.

* * *

"Shit," Potter breathed. "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—You were just there, and you looked so …"

Potter certainly looked sorry. It almost made Draco laugh—Potter had kissed him because he was _just there_, how brilliant was that?—but then he realised how deranged that could look, and held his breath instead. He needed a moment. Just a moment, to collect himself, so he wouldn't panic and start saying things he really didn't want Potter to know. And there were plenty of those.

"God, I'm so sorry," Potter said, again. He obviously felt his message hadn't been conveyed clearly enough the first time around. "This—I promise it's not why I brought you here, it just …" Potter ran a hand through that mess he called his hair, refusing to meet Draco's eyes. Evidently, the floor was that much more interesting. "It won't happen again."

"I should go." Draco's voice came out much higher than he'd expected, but at that moment, that was the least of his concerns.

He had almost made it to the Floo when Potter said, "No, wait!" Potter, who was still holding on to Draco's cloak. Who had no idea how much Draco had wanted that kiss, or for how long. Stupid, clueless Potter. Draco was so, so fucked. "You don't have to leave."

Draco did laugh then, even if it didn't sound much like laughing. There was no way he was going to stay there, not when the air felt so desperately tight around him and he wished so badly he could just disappear.

"Was it really so horrible?" he asked.

"What?" Potter blinked.

"The kiss. Was it—"

"No! I'm not sorry I _kissed _you. Well—" Potter drew in a slow breath, "—maybe a bit sorry, in a way. But not because I hated it." He winced. "Fuck, Draco, not that."

The silence stretched and Draco licked his lips. He felt like a weight had been lifted, but at the same time, this was uncharted territory. He had no idea where to go from there. And if not that, then _what_?

"I wanted to do that," Potter spoke again, a determined look on his face. "I have, for a while … Just, maybe not like this."

Oh.

Okay. That was good. Draco had wanted to do that, too. Perhaps he still did. Perhaps he could stop panicking now.

He grinned, a bit sheepishly. "You reckon we ought to try that again, then?"

* * *

"And then?" Pansy sounds breathless. She sits so close to the edge of the sofa, Draco is beginning to worry she might topple over.

"Then we sort of made out, for a while."

Pansy rolls her eyes. "Yes, I'd guessed as much, but _afterwards_?"

"After—_nothing _happened, you nosey bint!" Draco lies. "I'm not that easy."

"Fine"—she narrows her eyes, looking far from impressed—"keep your secrets, for now." The smile she gives Draco then is positively evil. "I'll just ask you again once we're done with this bottle. You've always been a bit of a lightweight."


End file.
